The Government's Narrative Fallacy on the Summer's Disorder

How the full weight of its propaganda machine is being brought to bear on the public

For a government that promised to “tread lightly” on its citizens, Keir Starmer’s administration is stomping pretty heavily on how we choose to think and speak about the riots and counter-protests that shook the country last month.

Take this bizarre post put on on X by the Home Office on September 5th:

There is, as they say, quite a lot to unpack in this troubling Ministry-of-Truth-style missive. The narrative that we are being asked to swallow runs something like this:

• everything was fine in our sunlit country

• then some hate-fuelled criminals and extremists kicked off violent disorder nationally

• next, a much larger number of altruistic, hate-rejecting people joined hands to stop the disorder

• and finally, the criminals and extremists were jailed by our decisive Government and Britain was once again a country of sunlit uplands

It’s a classic narrative cycle, like The Lion King only without lions or hyenas. It’s as if the Nudge Unit has called its behavioural psychologists back in after the lockdowns to help the Government craft a story that speaks to our most primitive need to explain the troubling world around us.

The counter protests that followed the riots that had themselves followed the Southport killings were almost entirely a reponse to a much-circulated message on social media. Replete with fire emojis, this appeared to be an incitement to attack one hundred immigration law and advisory firms all over the country:

This message turned out to be hoax, most likely from far left groups looking for an excuse to stage country-wide protests. I became aware of the message via a post on X from Harrow Labour.

Among the businesses listed was Yes UK Immigration in Harrow, about a mile and a half from my home and very close to where my black Muslim wife parks her car to catch the tube to work. Not appreciating that the message was a hoax, I insisted that she work from home that day.

As it turned out, no fire-starters turned up at any of these locations. Instead, what we saw was a highly-organised far left protest at each one with very little decency on display. Labour Councillor Ricky Jones allowed the mask to slip, inciting the crowd over a megaphone to slit the throats of the “fascists”. He has since been arrested and charged.

As for the local counter-protest near my house, Anas Altikriti addressed the crowd over a megaphone in a “small, unassuming act of selflessness” of his own. ·In analysing the source of the disorder, he described “the real enemy” as: “organisations, individuals, corporations, that are directly linked to the Zionist state of Israel.” He went on to describe these actors as “a cancer to all human beings”. His address can be viewed here. He has been pictured with the late Hamas leader Ismael Haniyeh.

The day after the counter-protests, the Government and mainstream media immediately began to assert the narrative. Commisioner of the Metropolitan Police Sir Mark Rowley told the BBC: “I’m really pleased with how it went… the show of unity from communities together defeated the challenges that we’ve seen.”

Coming back to Yvette Cooper’s chilling post on X, why say this almost a month after the events took place? To suppress free speech and dissent; to badge any criticism of the Government as hate and Islamophobia; and to pave the way for more crackdowns and restrictions of liberty.

Treading lightly indeed.